What’s a bored Berliner hausfrau to do? Find distraction in the arms of an illicit assignation or build a home studio and explore the possibilities of electronic sound? For Ursula Bogner it was a no-brainer. A truly remarkable woman, this decidedly bourgeois and middle class wife and mother found herself continually drawn to the eccentric and esoteric, like a moth to the flame of the mystic, and not-so mystic, arts. Her cerebral appetites led to the development of an interest in electronic music and, inevitably, to the creation of her own numerous soundscapes and experimental sketches.
This collection, the debut release on Jan Jelinek’s fledgling Faitiche label, is the first in a proposed series of compilations pulling together the various strands of Bogner’s canon. At once naïve (or, more likely, oblivious) to her contemporaries and, yet, predictive of German’s electronic futures (traces of Mouse On Mars and Oval are easy to discern), a great deal of this set recalls the work of early electronic pioneer Vladimir Ussachevsky, as well as the imaginary landscapes of John Cage (check the splendid burbling sonorities of Soloresonanzen), while at other times Bogner’s designs echo an Autechre plum out of digital juice and running on a back-up of steam.
